Latest blog articles in the blog group General

Blog by UCM-student Svea Grünkorn about Green Impact. The Green Impact programme first crossed my mind when I saw a picture of the frog “Kermit” being circulated within the university. Teams of the UM-wide Green Impact programme were trying to steal the stuffed animal from one another whereby they would score points for the challenge. The Green Impact challenge is a behaviour change and engagement programme which encourages staff and students to take sustainability actions during their daily lives at Maastricht University.

More than 17 million workers living or working in another Member State are exposed to possible violations of their rights, either because of poor implementation of EU rules, disinformation or lack of coordination among Member States. Therefore, the EU plans to set up a new authority that will support fair labour mobility within the EU, allowing citizens and businesses to seize the opportunities offered by the single market while supporting cooperation between national authorities, including in preventing and tackling social fraud and abuse. ITEM cooperates with...

As of 1 January 2019, the tax part of the tax credit will no longer be automatically granted to frontier workers who work in the Netherlands but do not reside in the Netherlands. This constitutes an obstacle for frontier workers. ITEM has already questioned this before. Recently, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued an interesting ruling[1] regarding the other part of the tax credit, the premium part: in this case, the Netherlands may proportionally reduce this part over time.

After Germany, Wallonia is also thinking about introducing a road toll. A resolution on tolls was recently discussed on 11 February at the Budget Committee of the Walloon Regional Government. The intention for the Walloon road toll follows the German idea: a road vignette, with a price differentiated over time. The Walloon taxpayer can deduct the cost of the road vignette from his road tax. The additional revenue is estimated at 50 million euros per year, which is actually paid by foreign car users, including the Flemish.